Several key internet applications have become increasingly popular in recent years. A current trend in internet usage involves social networking. Social networking involves making use of internet services which allow for the interaction and sharing of information between users of service.
Recently, mobile wireless communication standards have progressed to the point where relatively high speed data connections are possible to the phone over the wireless wide area network (WWAN). These standards include 1xEV-DO, HSDPA, EDGE, GPRS, Wi-Max (IEEE802.16e) and the like. Some social networking sites have included interfaces to their web sites optimized to make use of such high data rate mobile services for use on a mobile phone. These services are referred to as mobile social networking. For the most part, these services are simply versions of the standard social networking, redesigned to be usable on a mobile phone, adding little in the way of increased capability.
With the common capability of global positioning system (GPS) receivers being incorporated into phones, some additional capabilities have been added to some mobile social networking interfaces by incorporating location information for the user and that of the individual they interact with.
These services are utilizing GPS to determine the location of one mobile wireless user and to another to facilitate mobile social networking. An example of an existing application utilizing this approach is Loopt (www.loopt.com), which coordinates location based social interaction. One problem with GPS based mobile application involves the GPS receiver not receiving sufficient signal strength in many indoor locations. As a result these enhanced capabilities have typically been targeted at either navigation to a specified location, or as in the case with Loopt, allowing a user to see where their friends are located in a relatively large geographic location, on a map.
Another popular application for the internet is electronic commerce. Just as with social network, e-commerce services have provided interfaces optimized for use on mobile phones which provide basically the same capabilities as the standard interfaces. Very little location or proximity information has been used to enhance the mobile e-commerce experience.
Some attempts have been made to utilize RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips to perform mobile payments. This approach requires the additional hardware on a phone in the form of a RFID chip, or other specialized features. As a result, mobile electronic commerce has mostly allowed users to perform transaction with a remote party, such as purchasing an item on ebay (www.ebay.com). To date mobile electronic payments for individuals who are in close proximity to each other have not been practical for a number of reasons. First there is a need for the individuals to have a third trusted party to help facilitate the electronic transaction. Secondly, there needs to be a convenient, electronically secure, personally secure and anonymous method for each of the individuals to specify the party with which they wish to engage in a transaction. Thirdly, there is a need to cross validate the identities of the individuals engaged in the transaction. Finally, this method must work in indoors locations.
Most mobile phones on the market today support at least two wireless standards; one for the cellular wireless wide area network connection (WWAN) and one for a wireless personal or local area network (WPAN, WLAN). The cellular connection or WWAN is utilized for voice and data and can adhere to many different standards such as CDMA (IS-2000), GSM, W-CDMA, WiMax, etc. The WPAN or WLAN connection is typically for short range communications and is often used for wireless hands free devices, such as headsets, peripherals, or higher speed internet connections. The typical standards used for short range wireless communications include Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and in some cases Ultra-Wide-Band (UWB).
In another approach to mobile social networking some services have attempted to utilize short range wireless capabilities often available on phones such as IEEE802.11 (Wi-Fi) or Bluetooth to facilitate peer to peer communications. These are also referred to a MANETs or Mobile Ad-hoc Networks. These services typically consist of a software application operating on a mobile phone using peer to peer networks to facilitate communication between wireless devices. Examples of such existing applications include Mobile-Cheddar, Peer-2-Me, and Flobbi. Published US Patent application US 2008/0182591 A1 filed Dec. 13, 2007 describes one such peer to peer approach. One issue with these approaches is that one can not communicate with a peer once the devices are no longer in proximity. A further disadvantage is that all information to be exchanged must be stored locally on each of the peer devices as the communication occurs directly between the two devices and any policy for the delivery of locally stored content is difficult to enforce without the potential for fraud such as spoofing identities between the peers. Such fraud may lead to concerns of personal safety or privacy allowing the identity of an individual to be determined when it is not desired. Further this peer to peer model is inadequate for mobile electronic commerce in part due to the lack of an independent third party to facilitate the services required for a secure proximity based mobile electronic transaction as previously mentioned.